ABSTRACT
How does the human brain encode visual object categories? Our understanding of this has advanced substantially with the development of multivariate decoding analyses. However, conventional electroencephalography (EEG) decoding predominantly uses the mean neural activation within the analysis window to extract category information. Such temporal averaging overlooks the within-trial neural variability that is suggested to provide an additional channel for the encoding of information about the complexity and uncertainty of the sensory input. The richness of temporal variabilities, however, has not been systematically compared with the conventional mean activity. Here we compare the information content of 31 variability-sensitive features against the mean of activity, using three independent highly varied data sets. In whole-trial decoding, the classical event-related potential (ERP) components of P2a and P2b provided information comparable to those provided by original magnitude data (OMD) and wavelet coefficients (WC), the two most informative variability-sensitive features. In time-resolved decoding, the OMD and WC outperformed all the other features (including the mean), which were sensitive to limited and specific aspects of temporal variabilities, such as their phase or frequency. The information was more pronounced in the theta frequency band, previously suggested to support feedforward visual processing. We concluded that the brain might encode the information in multiple aspects of neural variabilities simultaneously such as phase, amplitude, and frequency rather than mean per se. In our active categorization data set, we found that more effective decoding of the neural codes corresponds to better prediction of behavioral performance. Therefore, the incorporation of temporal variabilities in time-resolved decoding can provide additional category information and improved prediction of behavior.